ore she put the thoughts of the
unpleasant situation from her mind and turned again to the great matter
which had brought her there, that day.

With a last glance at the gap in the rail fence, to make sure that it
had been carefully replaced, so that there could be no danger of finding
her ox gone when she returned, she started down the mountain, by a path
different from that which Joe had taken.

She had not gone very far, when, from a clump of bunch-grass just in
front of her, only partly, yet, renewed by the new season, a hare hopped
awkwardly, endeavoring to make off. Its progress was one-sided,
difficult.

Instantly she saw that it was wounded and with a little cry she ran
toward it and caught it. Instinctively the tiny animal seemed to
recognize her as a friend and ceased to struggle. One of its fore legs
had been broken, as she quickly saw.

With a little exclamation of compassion, she sat down upon a hummock,
tore from her skirt a bit of cloth, found, on the ground, two twigs,
made of these crude materials rude splints and bandages, bound the
wounded creature, and sent it on its painful way again. She sighed as,
after having watched it for a moment, she arose.

"Pears like us human bein's always was a-hurtin' somethin'," she
soliloquized, distressed. "Thar some chap has left that rabbit in misery
behind him, and here I've sent Joe Lorey down the mountain with a worse
hurt than it's got." She sighed. "It certain air a funny world!" she
said.

The subject of the wounded rabbit did not leave her mind until she had
clambered down the rocky path half-way to the small stream which she
sought below. She was ever ready with compassion for the suffering,
especially for dumb and helpless suffering animals, and, besides, the
episode had puzzled her. Who was there in those mountains who would
_wound_ a rabbit? Joe might have shot one, as might any other of the
mountain dwellers who chanced to take a sudden fancy for a rabbit stew
for supper, but Joe nor any of the other natives would have left it
wounded and in suffering behind him. Too sure their markmanship, too
careful their use of ammunition, for such a happening as that. Trained
in the logic of the woods, the presence of the little suffering animal
was a proof to her that strangers were about. The people of the
mountains regard all strangers with suspicion. Half-a-dozen times she
stopped to listen, half-a-dozen times she started on again without
having heard an